Assessment and realistic mathematics education

DSpace/Manakin Repository

Assessment and realistic mathematics education

Heuvel-Panhuizen, M.H.A.M. van den

(1996) CD-β wetenschappelijke bibliotheek, volume 19

(Dissertation)

Abstract

This book describes the consequences of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) for
assessing students’ understanding of mathematics in primary school. RME is the Dutch
answer to the worldwide need to reform mathematics education.
Changed ideas about mathematics as a school subject, its goals, ideas about teaching and
learning mathematics, require new forms of assessment. Within ... read more RME this means a
preference for observation and individual interviews. However, written tests have not
been abandoned within this approach. As this book makes clear, even written tests can
give teachers valuable information concerning the learning processes of their students, if
these tests are looked at in a new light.
The book has two sections. Part I forms the core of the work. Chapter one retraces the
early years of the reform of mathematics education in the Netherlands, and provides a
survey of how assessment was regarded at that time.
Chapter two concentrates on how the MORE research laid the foundation for further
development of primary school mathematics assessment within RME. Originally, this
research was a comparative study of the implementation and effects of different
approaches to mathematics education.
Chapter three provides a general orientation of the present state of affairs within RME
and presents a further elaboration of the RME theory for assessment. In the second half of
the chapter the RME views on assessment are held up to the mirror of international
assessment reform.
In chapter four, as a supplement to the general orientation, the focus is shifted to written
tests. In particular, paper-and-pencil short-task problems and the potential enrichment of
such problems through the application of RME theory are discussed.
Part II describes three assessment studies in detail. Chapter five focuses on one of the
tests that was developed for the MORE research, namely the test for beginning first
grade. It provides background information on the development of the test and describes
its unexpected results, including some international findings on the test.
Chapter six gives an account of a study into the opportunities for RME in special
education. The heart of this study is a written test on ratio, similar to MORE tests.
Chapter seven covers a developmental research project on assessment that was conducted
within the framework of the “Mathematics in Context” project, an American middle
school project. The chapter focuses on one particular assessment problem on percentage.
The main issue here is the tension between openness and certainty that one meets if one
moves to more open-ended problems in assessment. show less